The 2023 Water and WASH Futures Conference & Exhibition was held at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre from the 13th to 14th February 2023. The theme of the conference was “achieving SDG6 in a changing climate”. Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6) is focused on ensuring the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. As the climate crisis is largely a water crisis (with increasing cyclones, droughts, floods, etc) achieving SDG 6 will be extremely difficult with increasingly volatile water supplies – especially for the most vulnerable communities.
Across the different conference sessions, the consensus was that while we are making good progress towards SDG 6 much more needs to be done to achieve this goal, with an emphasis on co-designing solutions with communities, freely admitting what works and what doesn’t work and diversifying community water supplies (including through the installation of more advanced water treatment systems such as seawater desalination).
Moerk Water Solutions were invited to present some of their work outlining how seawater desalination could be successfully used to support existing water supplies for remote communities if quality technology, local servicing, community engagement and renewable energy were all used in combination. This is an approach that Moerk Water has undertaken for its remote water treatment systems for over a decade which has allowed these vulnerable communities to become more climate resilient.
Moerk Water Solution would like to thank everyone who attended as well as the organisers of the conference for such a thought provoking conference.
